There are folk in my family who have the 'third' eye. That is, people who 'sense' things and have had experiences. Hubby is one of them. His mum was another. My paternal granny was another. Son Tom is yet another, although his experiences seem to have faded.
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When Tom was a young teen, we rented a railway carriage in a disused railway station turned holiday rental. He woke one night, looked out of his window and witnessed what appeared to be a Victorian tea party on the station platform. He thought perhaps it was a re-enactment of sorts. All the men wore top hats, the ladies were long dresses and the scene was lit by gas lamps. Tom, like hubby, could only relate what he experienced. I wish I'd asked our hosts about any hauntings!
I don't have the 'third'eye'. I'm grateful in a way. I have an enormous imagination and get spooked too easily. I love these spooky stories and watching ghost shows on the telly and I'll happily watch ghost hunters scream like girls and run away, but I couldn't ghost hunt myself. I tried it twice and didn't like it!
My first try out on a ghost tour were the Edinburgh Vaults that lie beneath the city streets. These were lived in by poverty stricken folk two hundred years ago. Talk about creepy. We decided to give a tour a go. After all, why not? 😱 The guide carried a torch and she was a very good story teller. Too good.
At one point we passed through a door into a room - essentially a cave hewn out of the bedrock - and she told us she would shut the door behind us and switch off her torch. We would stand in the pitch black and, if we were lucky (!), we might feel little fingers take our hands, particularly those of the ladies. Shite! This would be the spirit of a little girl who had died here a couple of hundred years ago and was known to take the hands of visitors - particularly ladies. I gripped onto hubby. No ghost is holding my hand! This was my first bona fide ghost hunt and I didn't like it! He of the third eye whispered to me that he could sense nothing. He wasn't just trying to make me feel better.
Hubby senses stuff. Always has. He has a scientific mind not given to embellishments. He tells me his experiences and he's reporting the facts as they happen. He never denies people their experiences. So I believed him when he said that he could sense nothing, but that didn't stop me having the creeps. The tour guide switched on her torch again and opened the door onto the street, I shot out of there like the proverbial bat out of hell.
The next part of the tour was Greyfriars Cemetery and church. The outside tour was fine, but given the opportunity of being locked behind a wrought iron gate inside the crypt containing the coffins set deep within the walls, this bat shot off again. 'No way! Stuff that!'.
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My next experience was a visit with hubby and our ghost hunting son to Alton Cemetery, where Fanny Adams is buried. (I think the majority of us are aware of Fanny and her horrific story. Above is a link to the story if you aren't).
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FANNY |
I thought: Outside, I feel safe. I can escape if I need to. We stood beside Fanny's stone cross and son held his EVP (electronic voice phenomenon detector. See? I know these things!) over her grave. Tom said 'hello' to Fanny's spirit, and said that we would love to communicate. Nothing happened, and I felt fine, although hubby did sense that the coffin was empty (he feels now that his sense was misled).
Recently, Tom suggested a ghost hunt for me as a Mother's Day gift. As you do. The idea appealed tremendously, and since I'd been fine at Fanny's grave, I assumed I'd be fine with this, too. Tom arranged a nocturnal visit to Chawton Cemetery, just up the road from Chawton Village, where Jane Austen lived out her last years, and is a half hour walk from Alton.
Tom took his ghost hunting equipment with him. We arrived at the end of a dirt path and a belt of trees where the cemetery lay. It was pitch black apart from Tom's torchlight on the gravestones *shiver*, and the only sounds were distant traffic. I began to feel spooked. Tom set up his spook equipment - movement detector, camera and voice recorder. He switched his torch off and asked if there were any spirits present. Could we talk to them? Nothing happened but my imagination was going barmy. He said that he was going to move on to another part of the graveyard, but I shook my head. 'No - can't do this!' Tom said. 'Right. Time to go home.'
Tom has had results from ghost hunting before. He's captured orbs on his phone a number of times recorded voices, heard heavy breathing. He always reported back his findings. Of course, many folk think it's a load of old hooey. Fair enough, but I believe that there's something in it because there has been so much evidence over the years. Plus hubby's experiences - he's had too many to mention - have convinced me.
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I have had a personal experience. Whether ghostly or not it's impossible to say. Hubby and I stayed in his sister's hundred-years-old cottage in Wales a few years ago. One of the bedrooms lay separated from the other rooms along a narrow hallway. It looked very untouched and remained as it must have looked way back. The rough and tumble walls were whitewashed and part of the wall served as a bookshelf. I did love it. I love places like this. But sleep in it? This was to be my room, and hubby slept next to the sitting room in the more 'modern' area.
We retired to bed. I switched off the light and settled down. Then I began to hear what sounded like a deep male laugh coming from behind the exterior wall. 'Ho-ho-ho...'. I switched on my light. Of course there was nothing. Besides, there were no neighbours, no buildings on the other side of that wall. Just fields. I shrugged and settled back down again. The laughing began again. A very deep, slow 'Ho-ho-ho' sound coming from the other side of that wall. Switch the light back on. Nothing. Switch off. Settle down. 'Ho-ho-ho.' That's it. I switched the light on, grabbed my dressing gown, marched to hubby's room and dragged him awake. 'You can sleep in that room. It's giving me the creeps.' He did, and slept like the proverbial log.
The following day, after hubby insisted it must have been neighbours, I pointed out that there were none. Just fields. Later, Tom admitted that he'd felt weird in that room and didn't want to sleep in it.
I'm a tad disappointed that I couldn't hack ghost hunting. I like different, and ghost hunting is different, but I get the creeps in historic hotel bedrooms. So no - I just have to watch those ghost shows and have Tom report back to me after his ghost hunt and hubby passing on his experiences as they happen. At least I have that, and hubby's stories get noted in my Keep Notes under 'G Spooky Moments'.
My own personal spooky stories, told to me and only me.
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| HALLOWEEN ME |
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